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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Theism and gnosticism',
	'<{subtitle}>' => 'Use your words correctly',
	'<{copyright year}>' => '2019',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<p>
	There seems to be a lot of misuse of words, which greatly hinders the discussion of religion or lack thereof.
	So lets clear up a few things.
</p>
<p>
	For this discussion, let&apos;s use the example of a box.
	Whatever&apos;s in the box represents the gods that exist in the actual world.
</p>
<h2>Theism, antitheism, and atheism</h2>
<h3>Theism</h3>
<p>
	Theism is the assertion that there&apos;s something in the box.
	As a theist, you believe in one or more gods.
	That is all.
	There is not necessarily as assertion as to how many gods or of what nature.
	You&apos;ve never been able to look inside the box, but you believe something is in there.
</p>
<p>
	Most theists believe in a particular god.
	In our example, they believe a particular item is in the box.
	The Abrahamic religions believe in Yahweh, who is also known as Jehovah, Allah, and several other names.
	These are all the same god.
	However, the details are a bit different.
	Let&apos;s make him a drinking vessel in the box.
	Christians believe there&apos;s a chalice in the box.
	Jews, a fine glass.
	And Muslims believe there&apos;s a mug in the box.
	These are all the same, is a way.
	You can drink whatever you like from any of them.
	But at the same time, they&apos;re very different too.
	But it goes beyond that.
	Christianity, for example, tries to assert even more specifically what&apos;s in the box.
	The Jehovah&apos;s Witnesses assert that it&apos;s a platinum chalice, the Catholics believe the chalice to be silver, while the Mormons claim the chalice to be made of gold.
	All these people, who have never been allowed to look in the box, are not only claiming that it contains a drinking vessel, but also asserting various things about said drinking vessel that don&apos;t match the assertions of everyone else.
</p>
<p>
	Meanwhile, someone else doesn&apos;t think it&apos;s a drinking vessel in the box at all.
	Or maybe there&apos;s multiple drinking vessels.
	The ancient Greeks believed there was a spoon, a rock, a branding iron, a squirrel, a chair, and a bunch of other things in the box, all at once.
</p>
<p>
	When you claim the box has something in it, the burden of proof lies with you.
	It&apos;s not up to anyone else to disprove your claim, but instead, your job to make a case for your claim.
	If you want someone to believe in your god, you can&apos;t simply make claims such as &quot;What else could there be?&quot;.
	This is an unreasonable and meaningless argument.
</p>
<h3>Antitheism</h3>
<p>
	Antitheists believe that there&apos;s nothing in the box.
	The box is simply empty.
	No gods exist.
	Most theists believe this to be the position of the atheist, but it&apos;s actually the position of the antitheist.
</p>
<p>
	Again, this is a claim.
	Antitheists are making the claim that there is no god, which is an assertion, so the burden of proof lies with them.
	If they want to convince you there&apos;s no god, they&apos;ve got to provide evidence.
</p>
<h3>Atheism</h3>
<p>
	Atheism is the lack of belief in a god or gods.
	That is <strong>*not*</strong> the same as a belief that there&apos;s no god.
	In our box example, atheists, having not seen what&apos;s in the box, don&apos;t assert that any particular item or items is in it.
	However, that does <strong>*not*</strong> mean that they assert that the box is empty either!
	This is why you hear &quot;I don&apos;t know&quot; so much when you&apos;re trying to ask an atheist how the universe came into being if not via a god.
	They don&apos;t make any assertion as to whether a god was involved or not!
	Most theists seem to think this is the position of the agnostic.
	It&apos;s not.
	Agnosticism isn&apos;t the middle ground between theism and atheism, but rather, atheism is the middle ground between theism and antitheism.
</p>
<p>
	This isn&apos;t a claim, which means there&apos;s no burden of proof.
	Asking an atheist to prove their beliefs doesn&apos;t make sense, because while the atheist isn&apos;t asserting that there&apos;s a god or gods, they&apos;re also not asserting that there are none.
	No assertion is made, so there&apos;s nothing to prove or disprove.
	That said, an atheist may be able to disprove <strong>*particular*</strong> gods, they just have no assertion about gods in general.
	Some gods are claimed to be self-contradicting, making their existence impossible, and other gods can be disproved based on what we learn from exploring our world.
</p>
<p>
	For example, take Yehweh, who is omnipotent and still somehow omniscient.
	If he knows what he&apos;s going to do in the future, he can&apos;t change that because he does, it&apos;s not what he knew would happen.
	That would mean that he didn&apos;t actually know, meaning he&apos;s not omniscient.
	On the other hand, if he can&apos;t change what he&apos;ll do in the future, it means he&apos;s not omnipotent, and actually has a lot less power than even the weakest humans.
	Even if you stretch the definitions of these words, Yahweh is said to never be able to lie.
	Any being that&apos;s even close to being omnipotent could perform such a simple task.
	There are no excuses.
	If you can&apos;t lie, you may be incredibly powerful, but you&apos;re not omnipotent.
	We also have beings such as Zeus, who supposedly resided on Mount Olympus.
	This mountain wasn&apos;t explorable in ancient times, so there was no way to know for sure whether powerful entities lived there or not.
	In more-modern times though, the mountain was later explored and found to be void of gods.
	There just wasn&apos;t anyone up there, which meant Zeus couldn&apos;t be anything more than a myth.
</p>
<h2>Gnosticism and agnosticism</h2>
<h3>Gnosticism</h3>
<p>
	Gnostics claim it&apos;s possible to <strong>*know*</strong> what&apos;s in the box.
	They claim there to be empirical evidence that can lead you to the right conclusion, though they don&apos;t necessarily claim to have access to that evidence themself.
	For example, a gnostic atheist doesn&apos;t know if there&apos;s a god, but believes it possible to one day prove whether gods exist or not.
	A gnostic antitheist would believe we can empirically disprove the existence of all gods, not just the ones humans have already presented as possibilities.
	A gnostic atheist wouldn&apos;t know whether to believe in gods or not, but believes it&apos;s possible to find out the truth eventually.
</p>
<h3>Agnosticism</h3>
<p>
	Agnostics aren&apos;t the people with no belief as to whether there&apos;s a god or not; that&apos;s atheists.
	Agnostics believe there&apos;s no way to prove one way or another.
	You could be an agnostic Mormon, for example, and believe in Jehovah with all your heart, but also think there&apos;s no way to prove Jehovah&apos;s existence until you die and meet him in person.
	You could also be an agnostic atheist, not making an assertion to what you believe to be an unanswerable question.
	Likewise, you could be an agnostic antitheist, believing that there are no gods, but also believing that there&apos;s no real way to prove that for sure.
	Agnosticism is simply the assertion that we can never be completely certain.
</p>
END
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